UK: Recticel has appointed Laura Katon as its House Building Manager for the southern region and Kevin Lee as Area Sales Manager for East Anglia.

Katon holds over 20 years’ experience in sales and account management, liaising with house builders, local developers and building contractors. She started the new role in early December 2018.

Lee is responsible for distribution, merchant, contractor and sales relating to Recticel’s tapered-roofing sister company, Gradient. Based in Norwich, he reports to the area’s Regional Director, Paul Griffiths.

Germany: Evonik’s Calostat insulation product has received an environmental product declaration (EPD) from the Institut für Bauen und Umwelt (IBU). The EPD takes into account the entire production process, from manufacture of precursors, their transport, production of Calostat and the option of recycling the material.

Calostat is a non-combustible thermal insulation material based on silicon dioxide.

It is a class A (non-combustible) building material with a thermal conductivity λ of 0.019 W/(mK). It does not absorb liquid water but is permeable to water vapour. Other distinguishing features are its compressive strength of ≥ 90 kPa and gross density of 165kg/m³. It contains no fungicides, algicides, pesticides, binding agents, or flame-retardants. Notably, the manufacturer also says that the product can be recycled.

Denmark: Rockwool plans to use Intershop’s commerce-as-a-service (CaaS) product for its online business-to-business (B2B) sales platform. The change is part of the company’s general digitisation strategy. The new system allows connectivity between a customer-relationship manager (CRM), product information management (PIM) and quotation system with the storefront.

“With our business running worldwide, being successful in B2B means multi-country, multi-currency, multi-brand management with complex sales channels that need to go hand in hand. We were looking for a commerce solution that allows us to target different channels individually, while being able to scale without effort. Intershop CaaS proved most suited for this purpose," said Mirella Vitale, Senior Vice President Marketing, Communication & Public Affairs at Rockwool Group.

A pilot of the new system is expected in mid-2019. Expansion across different channels will then follow.

South Korea: FM Global has approved LG Hausys’ phenolic foam as fire-protective by global standards. The US-based mutual insurance company granted Factory Mutual Approval on criteria testing fire-resistance for ceiling boards and wall panels for the insulation product, according to the Korea Herald newspaper. LG Hausys started producing phenolic foam insulation board in 2013. In May 2018 it opened a second production line at its Cheongju plant in North Chungcheong Province. A third production line is scheduled to be completed by early 2020.